“the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can be so easily established because the idea of “structurelessness” does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones.”
I do think that professional/social overlap is less of a problem when the power structure is flatter. I agree that informal power structures can arise, but I don’t think formal power structures help with this (by making it more explicit), because often the formal structure is a different thing to the informal structure. E.g., you can imagine a person who has various managers and superiors at work, but also feels less powerful or lower-status relative to colleagues who are nominally on the same level, or friends that they don’t work with, because (e.g.) they’ve been in the community longer, or they’re twitter-famous, or they’re just more socially dominant, or whatever reason. So I do think getting rid of formal power structures would mitigate the problems, because it would get rid of one avenue for abuse and complication (even though informal power structures would mean that there still was some potential for abuse).
As for whether it could work in EA—I’m not sure, but I think other movements and organizations have experimented with flatter power structures. I think the EA community might be a good place to experiment with this, both because EAs are generally open to experimentation/doing things a bit differently, and because I don’t think the average EA has a strong will to power for power’s sake (like there’s limited macho posturing, for example).
Strongly agree with this.
“the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can be so easily established because the idea of “structurelessness” does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones.”
The Tyranny of Structurelessnes
Additionally what might work well for a group of 10 may quickly become impractical when the group scales.
(replying to both skyblue20 and Jamie)
I do think that professional/social overlap is less of a problem when the power structure is flatter. I agree that informal power structures can arise, but I don’t think formal power structures help with this (by making it more explicit), because often the formal structure is a different thing to the informal structure. E.g., you can imagine a person who has various managers and superiors at work, but also feels less powerful or lower-status relative to colleagues who are nominally on the same level, or friends that they don’t work with, because (e.g.) they’ve been in the community longer, or they’re twitter-famous, or they’re just more socially dominant, or whatever reason. So I do think getting rid of formal power structures would mitigate the problems, because it would get rid of one avenue for abuse and complication (even though informal power structures would mean that there still was some potential for abuse).
As for whether it could work in EA—I’m not sure, but I think other movements and organizations have experimented with flatter power structures. I think the EA community might be a good place to experiment with this, both because EAs are generally open to experimentation/doing things a bit differently, and because I don’t think the average EA has a strong will to power for power’s sake (like there’s limited macho posturing, for example).